Volcano Credited for Dazzling Sun Displays

Vin Scully couldn’t quit talking about it during a Dodger broadcast. Bathrobe-wrapped early risers were surprised by it when they wandered outside to pick up the paper and bring in the cat.

Mother Nature has been doing some spectacular things to the Southern California heavens for the past few days, and weather experts predict the show could last for weeks.

Thanks to the eruptions of Mt. Pinatubo in the Philippines, sunsets and sunrises have been shaded with deep, deep reds and oranges--sometimes tinged with greens, purples or yellows.

“We saw the same thing out here,” said Steve Burback, a meteorologist with WeatherData Inc., a Wichita, Kan., firm that provides weather data to The Times.

Burback said Mt. Pinatubo, which began erupting with devasting impact June 10, hurled dust so high into the stratosphere that the minute particles are producing the spellbinding sunsets and sunrises across the nation more than a month later.

“Dust gets scattered way up in the atmosphere, way up high . . . and causes the red sunsets,” said Burback. “That’s all it was.”